Frankenstein - Lethal Ambition

Lethal Ambition

Desire and ambition usually serve as healthy instruments for those who seek an elevated status or the conquest of a goal. Both allow one to focus on a set destination and not steer off track. However, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor’s desire and ambition serves as a detrimental attribute. At a young age, he obtains an aspiration to achieve eternal fame and glory. Although his rapture for a romanticized scientific discovery and adventure seems innocent, it ironically leads to his demise. With the determination to create life, also comes an overambitious mind set which clouds Victor’s mind from the potential consequences of his actions. The process leading to the creation of the monster not only causes Victor’s misery due to him isolation from him loved ones, but also his anguish from the actual process of forging the monster. After accomplishing his mission to create the monster, Victor, instead of receiving the prophesized renounce, enters a world of anguish caused by his own creation and his unwillingness to take responsibility for his work. However, even when he finally decides to destroy his mistake, he suffers due to his creation and his ambition. Victor’s over ambition for romanticized discovery and glory causes him to not consider the consequences, which ultimately leads to his agony and dissolution.

Victor’s hunger and ambition to achieve romanticized scientific greatness by playing God in the creation of life, serves as parasite that cause his self induced torment. Even before creating the monster, Victor believed “wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I (Victor) could…render man invulnerable to any” . Throughout the beginning of the book, Victor consistently demonstrates him desire to obtain scientific grandeur. Ambition for greatness fuels his decision to embark on a quest to create a being, but the ecstatic momentum he begins with rapidly turns to severe anguish. The pressure Victor places on himself to create the monster becomes malignant to his mind and body, which causes him suffering. He declares, “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree” (41). The detrimental toll on Victor’s body from creating the monster exists as only half the torment he experience due to his ambition to obtain fame. He begins to feel as if he were “one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favorite employment” (41). Through this statement, Victor expresses his belief that the project’s complete take over of his life impenetrable like slavery. The feeling of being trapped is not the only mental turmoil that his ambition for greatness causes him. The numbness Victor experiences exists as another side effect of him pursuit. He confesses because “I (Victor) was engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit (the monster)… my (Victor’s) eyes were insensible to the charms of nature” (39). The creation engulfing his entire being to an extent where he can only function on one thing, serves as further evidence that his ambition for scientific glory ultimately causes his unhappiness. The paramount negative effect his ambition causes him lies in his self-induced isolation from his loved ones. Victor admits that in committing entire existence to the project “made me (Victor) forget those… whom I had not seen for so long a time (his family)” (40). Having to “procrastinate all that related to my (Victor’s) feelings of affection until the great object… should be completed” (40) serves as a huge hit his mental wellbeing. Not communicating with those who Victor loved, he deprives himself of the emotional support he needs. Victor’s ambition to achieve scientific renounce causes him to actually create the monster, which consequently instigates his mental and physical anguish.

The completion and existence of the monster causes Victor an unbearable amount of anguish, but one can only place the blame on Victor’s ambition for creating the monster and on Victor’s desire to keep his name clean for future scientific fame. After the monster runs away from Victor, Victor falls into months of illness because his creation horrifies him. He becomes severely ill again when people accuse him for the monsters murder of Henry: “The human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured” (155). The physical trauma he goes through is self-induced because Victor’s ambition to gain fame from led to the creation of the monster. The murder of William by the monster and the conviction of Justine for the murder also cause Victor extreme agony. Once again the cause of the pain Victor feels from the death of William lies in his own actions. His ambition